Criminals versus creditors

After several years of remarkably united leadership, Stockton government has split into two camps over the best solution to the city's long-running crime problem.

Michael Fitzgerald

After several years of remarkably united leadership, Stockton government has split into two camps over the best solution to the city's long-running crime problem.

At stake is not only public safety but potential damage to the city's long-term finances, its bankruptcy prospects and a broader effort to fight crime countywide.

But there is danger in not acting, too, says Mayor Anthony Silva.

Silva largely bypassed City Hall and traditional channels and created a citizens' group to craft a fast-track plan to fund more police.

"I don't think I'm a loose cannon," Silva said. "I do think I have a mandate from the citizens to make this city safer."

Stockton must become safer before it can become more prosperous, Silva added.

Counters City Manager Bob Deis: "Selling this plan and buying into it is the equivalent of selling and buying snake oil or drugs. It may give you a false sense of euphoria. Long term, it will kill you."

For my part, the mayor's plan may be serviceable, if it's purged of certain ideas contributed by advisors who know nothing about criminal justice or bankruptcy.

But the plan seems strangely maverick in the way it is being developed and in how it would create a bureaucracy outside City Hall and the police station. That hardly seems necessary.

The plan calls for gathering 12,000 signatures to place a half-cent sales tax increase on the ballot this summer. The tax would raise $18 million in restricted funds to pay for around 100 more police.

Why signatures? The council could vote to place Silva's measure on the ballot. Silva apparently does not have four votes on the council.

Funds are to be "restricted" to police because the city's creditors cannot touch restricted funds.

The problem - the first problem - is timing, Deis said. The city is days away from a federal bankruptcy court trial on its application to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

"It will just make the creditors go nuts," Deis said. "If the city is pushing a restricted tax that aces them out, then they're going to get pissed and they're going to go to the judge and say, 'They're showing bad faith, they're interested in taking care of themselves, so bump them out of bankruptcy.'"

The city's outside counsel, a bankruptcy specialist, corroborated this opinion in a memo to the council.

Silva pooh-poohs the expert's advice. He and his advisors are confident the judge will allow the city to enter Chapter 9.

"I think attorneys that are working for a governmental agency are inclined to give answers based on what the payee wants," Silva said.

Silva appears to distrust city government. He says he recently hired a trustworthy locksmith to change the lock on the mayor's office door. Opponents were letting themselves in, perhaps to filch and leak documents.

More broadly, his plan also seeks to protect tax revenue from city leadership that, in his view, cannot be trusted not to raid public safety funds or properly handle city fiscals. There is some basis for this fear.

His draft plan goes way beyond paying for more cops. It creates a limited parallel government. One he feels can be trusted.

Tax funds would be managed not by the city manager but an appointed "Advocate/Administrator," guided by a high-paid consultant and a volunteer advisory committee.

The consultant is to be famed police expert William J. Bratton, renowned for drastically reducing crime in New York City and elsewhere, Silva said.

The plan further directs the city to bust many more misdemeanants and to pay to open more county jail space. Or to create city jail space.

"There is mention of an administrator, another consultant and an administrator's committee to discuss how to reduce crime," Jones said in a statement. "Yet there is already experience at the Police Department, the Chief's Community Advisory Board, a Countywide Community Corrections Partnership, and the Marshall Plan."

In proposing a city lockup, the plan also appears to wildly underestimate the difficulty of regulatory demands imposed by the Bureau of State and Community Prisons. If you think local government is problematic, wait until that outfit heaps red tape on the city.

Sheriff Steve Moore applauded the plan as a good opening move. But, he said, the city should not act alone. Other cities and the county area matter, too.

"We need to make sure that we have a countywide approach on solving bed-space problems," Moore said.

The plan also caps police base salaries at $88,000. Somebody decided that's enough. If more is needed, the city's General Fund must pay for it.

Ignoring the free market wage levels and exposing the insolvent General Fund is a double whammy. It will make hiring police harder.

And it will heap more financial responsibility on an already insolvent General Fund.

So when the city goes Chapter 9 and sits down with creditors to negotiate debts restructuring, it may not have the money for a plan of adjustment that satisfies them.

"It pretty much guarantees we will not have the money to restructure and get out of bankruptcy," Deis said.

Silva countered that such fears are scare tactics. The plan is still being revised. It's open to input. But it is leapfrogging the Marshall Plan because he feels an obligation to help under-represented people in crime-ridden neighborhoods.

"If you say, we're sorry, our system is broken and you're not even going to make arrests, what message does this send?" he asked.

Perhaps the message is that the system needs to be fixed, not replaced.